Writing & Design for Games & Narratives

You Can Hear Me Play Dark Planet on the Air

It was sometime after six o’clock in the evening, I’d just eaten my first meal of the day, and as I sat down at the mic to record a sample session of my new tabletop roleplaying game … I forgot everything I prepared.

This was Saturday night. I had just come from another demo that afternoon. I settled into a home studio to record a play session of my new game, Dark, for James D’Amato’s podcast, called One Shot (also available on iTunes) after he graciously invited me on the show. I offered James any of the game’s three settings to play in and he chose the grim and desperate retro-future setting called Dark Planet. You can hear how it went down on the show. (Please pardon my incessant “ah” and “uh” sounds.)

Perhaps obviously, I let the game drag here and there when I should’ve been ratcheting up the tension and keeping things lean and tense. We had a good time actually playing but I can do better when it comes to making an adventure for a listening audience. Too often, I think, I let the tension break. I wish I’d been more vivid, more detailed and tactile in my descriptions, too. So much of Dark is about the character’s movement through the environment and I could’ve dialed that up more.

You know what bit I really liked, though, was the bead of blood running down the cables. That connects the characters and the environment. I like those moments.

The players did a great job of finding their characters — and their own unique styles — really quickly. The clashes we felt between the characters struck me as natural and organically emerging from their own outlooks. And everyone engaged the game world in really exciting ways, which is fun to see.

I’d love to try something like this again when I’m operating at full capacity.

Have you heard the show? What did you think? I’d love to get your input or questions on it.